"Our fans are pretty good. They don't give away too much. Sometimes people love dropping spoilers, but our fans are good. They tend to do it in such a way that doesn't ruin it for fans who don't want to know."--Phil Keoghan

Max and Katie won the best prizes this season (of course except the million dollars yet). Them winning 2 legs with 2 cars and $20,000 is like.. they already won 1/10 of the million WTF?

Their prize may be even 5 times more worthy than all the prizes which Bates and Anthony have won.

The last time a team which didn't win and going home with really good prizes are the Bransens. My goodness, OIL FOR LIFE, loads of cash and cars for every member I think. I believe somebody calculated and predicted that the Bransens went home with about $400,000 worth of cash and prizes from the race.

My dear, nothing beats oil for life. And that's exactly my point isn't it? Max and Katie won 2 legs... which is equivalent to almost or even more than what Zev and Justin and Andy and Tommy's prizes are worth.

Starting out a new marriage in front of millions of people around the globe isn’t your normal honeymoon, but that’s exactly what Max (@MrMaxBichler) and Katie Bichler (@KatherinBichler) did on The Amazing Race. The newlywed couple stumbled at the beginning of the race, but triumphed toward the end of the 12 legs of the race, bringing home 3 first place finishes in a row leading into the final leg. They weren’t able to overcome the powerhouse team of Anthony and Bates, who took home the grand prize, but they ended up with the 2nd place finish in a race around the world. The Yak got a moment to sit down with the newlyweds today to discuss what married life holds next for them.

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The Yak: It was a close call at the end of the race last night. It was tough to watch, but I have to commend you on making it to the Final 3. Very few teams get the opportunity to race all the way from start to finish, so congratulations on that accomplishment.Max: Thanks. Katie: Thank you!

The Yak: Obviously, you didn’t have a “normal” honeymoon by any means, but how did you enjoy the race and have you been able to take a regular honeymoon since you finished the race?Max: No, we haven’t yet. We decided that we’d watch the race through in it’s entirety, and then we’re going to go away for our 1-year anniversary instead. It was probably the most public honeymoon that anybody’s ever taken, and we invited all of America to come along with us, so it was definitely interesting.

The Yak: Max, in the beginning of the last episode, you mentioned that you were concerned with beating Mona and Beth. Why did you think they were such strong competition, and do you regret how you played that last U-Turn?Max: No, I think it was Bates and Anthony that said their greatest competition was Mona and Beth because Katie and I knew that our biggest competition was Bates and Anthony. Although we were friendly with Bates and Anthony and Caroline and Jen, and we like them all as people, Katie and I were there to win and we had planned on U-Turning Bates and Anthony in Scotland if we would have gotten there first. We didn’t get there first, and we arrived after them, so at that point, it was time to U-Turn whomever was in the back and buy yourself some insurance in case you get a flat tire or something along the way. We knew all along that Bates and Anthony were going to be a problem for us, but we never had a chance to get rid of them because in Vietnam, the U-Turn was pretty much an impotent U-Turn there because Dave and Conner had already eliminated themselves that morning, so we didn’t want to waste our U-Turn on that.

The Yak: Was was the biggest obstacle or fear that you overcame while you were on the race?Max: I think learning how to race and be married at the same time. There’s a huge learning curve on the race, and the longer you’re in it, the better you get at it. Maybe we were getting better at the marriage thing, and we were also getting better at the racing thing at the same time, but that’s the biggest obstacle right there. Having two things that you’re trying to nurture at one time.

The Yak: What was your favorite place to visit?Katie: It’s hard to pick just one place that’s my favorite because everything was so different, culturally. We loved Switzerland. That was awesome. Bora Bora was the most tropical paradise you could ever imagine. Those would be my top two.Max: If we were going to take a honeymoon, we had considered Bora Bora initially, and we definitely confirmed our suspicion. It made us want to go back there. For a honeymoon, I don’t think you could beat it. It’s absolutely the most gorgeous place I’ve seen on this earth.

The Yak: What was the toughest challenge that you faced on the race?Max: The most difficult was probably Cheese Hill, maybe.Katie: Yeah, Cheese Hill was hard.Max: Physically, Cheese Hill was probably the most difficult and demanding thing we did. We did pretty well, but it was really hard. I remember climbing up the ladder with the 50-pound wheels of cheese, and Katie looked at me and said, “Do you got this?” I said, “I think so,” and she said, “Good for you!” I thought was going to puke because I was so gassed and so winded. You have to remember, we were at elevation as well, so it compounded everything. Physically, that Switchback may have been the most demanding of all of them.

The Yak: Would you consider doing Amazing Race again or another reality type show?Max: Yeah! Katie and I, in coming as close as we did to winning, all we think about now is an All-Star season or “Unfinished Business” because we feel like just when we started to get really good at the race and figure it out, that’s when it ended for us. We really think about it pretty much daily. Katie is also a huge reality fan, and I think Katie would go for just about anything else, reality-wise. [Katie laughs] I know she’s been pushing me toward some other shows, too, so we’ll see. You only get 15 minutes of fame with the race, but if it turns into something else, it’ll be awesome. If people liked us and they’d like to see more of us on something else, then that’d be a great compliment. If they hated us and they want to see more of us because they hate us so much, that would be just as good of a compliment.The Yak: Just as long as they’re talking about you, right?Max: Exactly! Just like Yogi Bera said, ” Half of them will hate you, half of them will love you, and the other half won’t know who you are.”

The Yak: Was there anything that really caught you by surprise while you were on the race? Maybe something you weren’t expecting before you went into it?Max: Yeah, for me, it was how hard the race was, physically, with the travel. You’re not sleeping in a hotel bedroom, you’re sleeping on a beach or an airport floor or in a tent or a hammock, so that was the thing that caught me most by surprise. It’s just so hard on the body, and you see why people make really poor decisions, like when the clue said to take a train and they take a cab. You’re watching at home with a bag of potato chips, and you’re like, “Oh, you dummy! How could you be so stupid?” Well, you’re so stupid because you haven’t slept in a bed in 4 nights, you haven’t had a shower in 5 days, and you’re probably starving, so that’s like the trifecta right there.The Yak: That seems to be the consensus amongst the teams. It’s much tougher than you expected it to be before going into the race.Max: I think everything translates well over the television, except for that part of it. You don’t see me on a plane for 17 hours, you see a yellow line darting from Zurich to Botswana. It’s definitely much harder, and I know that Phil told all of us on Day 1 at the starting line, he said, “For some reason, everybody says at the Pit Stop on the first leg, it’s much harder than it looks. I don’t know why everyone thinks it looks so easy.” I just don’t think it translates to really show how difficult it really is.

The Yak: Did you do anything special to prepare for the race once you found out you had been selected?Katie: To prepare, we did a lot of homework on the past challenges, including every possible thing, like watching everyone’s exit interviews to see if they would have packed something differently or do something differently, so I definitely did my homework in that sense. Physically, we did cross fit, we ran with backpacks on, we did everything you possibly could to prepare.Max: You could always do more, but we felt very physically prepared for the race, and mentally, we were pretty sharp. We knew capitals. We knew different flags. I think we felt very prepared going in, but nothing can really prepare you other than running it once. There’s too many unknowns out there, and it’s hard to say what you’re going to do when you’re under so much anxiety and so much stress. You can’t prepare yourself for that.

The Yak: What’s next for the both of you?Katie: We’ve gone back to our normal lives. Everything is business as usual. We’re back to work.Max: We’re waiting for the phone to ring, so help us by getting the phone ringing. We’ve got nothing right now, but we’re waiting for any opportunity that might happen.

The Yak: We’ll get the word out for you! Thanks for talking with us!Max: Thank you!Katie: Thank you, Yakkity Yaks!

Read what Max and Katie said about their time in the Race, and if they are planning on having another honeymoon!

Doan N: Max and Katie: How was your marriage working after the race?Max and Katie: Our marriage is stronger than ever after the race. Our marriage has been great...we kicked it off with a bang but it's strong and we both have really think skin so we didn't let anything bother us. Everything is fantastic.

Chris K: Katie: You ALWAYS looked so completely focused, how do you stay so intensely focused when dealing with all the stress that TAR puts you through?Katie: I think in general - I am a very calm person. The race is stressful with so much anxiety but I was prepared for that and knew I needed to be calm and maintain my cool to get us further in the game.

Jessica D: My question for Katie and Max is why they chose to use the UTurn in an emotional way (against a team they did not like) versus using it on their strongest competition (Bates and Anthony) and whether they regret that now.Max and Katie: We didn't have the opportunityto use it on Bates and Anthony because they arrived before us. The reason we used it on Mona and Beth was because if something were to happen to us (flat tire, car broke down), we would have some extra time.

Joy N: Max & Katie do you feel like you lost due to the total luck involved in the the briefcase challenge?Max and Katie: Yes. 100%. We knew everything at the Lincoln memorial...we knew 1100 Pennsylvania wasn't The White House...but in the end it just came down to luck.

André D: For Max & Katie: What was the funniest thing you have experienced on the Race?Max and Katie: Our speed bump in Africa - having to do a dance with the local women wearing a skirt that I had knitted myself.

Lukas K: Max and Katie: y'all were my favorites! I'm sorry you didn't win but you made it really far! What was the most difficult moment about the race?Max and Katie: Managing the stress and making good decisions were the most difficult part of the race.

Walter U: Katie and Max; after the race did you actually have a regular honeymoon?Max and Katie: We have not gone away yet but we plan on going away for our 1 year anniversary.

Newlyweds Max and Katie had won the past three legs on The Amazing Race 22 and looked like they might make it a fourth straight victory on the final leg. But then came the spy Switchback Roadblock. Despite getting there first, Max had trouble locating his spy and completed the task third, but the two were able to recover for a second-place finish. "It was hard to watch. We loved watching the first half [of the two-hour finale]," he tells TVGuide.com. "I wish we had a week to enjoy that victory instead of just slamming the door on it. But it was fun. We'd been dreading watching D.C. since we did it." Find out how much time they lost at the challenge, if they think of themselves as villains and more.

Do you know how far behind Bates and Anthony you were?Max: I really don't know. Far enough to lose! It was really all luck in the suitcase. Bates got it on, like, his fourth try. I had asked probably all 50 agents and the 50th agent was my guy.Katie: We probably spent an hour there. It definitely felt longer.Max: I was literally doing laps around the Tidal Basin and then I realized that the agents weren't going in a straight line. They were stopping, turning around and going the other way as well. ... It was a terrible feeling because we felt it slipping away from us.

The globes task was partially based on luck too. Does it bother you that there were two luck-based challenges in the final leg?Max: The globes didn't bother me. It was partially based on luck, but there was some skilled involved. You did have to know what the countries looked like and what the order was. But the suitcase will bother me forever. It was all luck finding the guy and then you were also able to use your notes [to do the briefcase code], so it didn't even test your memory.Katie: The globes one was extremely easy. ... You know the final challenge is usually something memory-related about the season. Even if you are not a smart person or don't know geography, every time you're on a flight for 12, 18 hours, you look on a map and you know what country you're going to and what it looks like. It was just a matter of finding the right globes. There were only a couple right answers. Once Bates and Anthony had gone through, there were fewer globes for us. I knew at that point that they were ahead of us. It was really disheartening.

Were you resigned to second place? Did you think maybe they could've gotten lost?Katie: Yeah, that was always in the back of our minds. Maybe they got lost, maybe they got a bad cab. But Bates and Anthony are a very strong team and if you give them an inch, they'll take it a mile. They're professional athletes, they're very competitive and we knew they were first.Max: And we were headed to such a well-known location for the final Pit Stop that it was pretty much impossible to not know where it is. Even the worst cabbie is going to know how to get to Mount Vernon.

Phil told me he thinks you get the award for Most Improved Players. You definitely turned it on after all your issues in Botswana. What changed?Max: I think we just started to learn how to race. The biggest thing for us was in the beginning we ran a little bit out of control. We were making bad decisions, like in Africa. Instead of stopping and asking, "Are we heading the right way?" we would continue driving that way. We realized it was better to stop and lose five minutes to ask for directions or confirm you were going the right way than to lose an hour by racing out of control. We were more focused.

You were the first to notice the Titanic menu. Are you surprised no one else saw it right away or stopped to check?Katie: Yeah, it did take them a bit. We did miss it at first, but I'm a really detail-oriented person. When I read the clue, it said five courses and we grabbed the table menu and there were only two. So we started plating, but I knew we were missing something. So before we started running down there like chickens with our heads cut off, I made sure to double-check. Mona and Beth had a really hard time with that. They asked us for help, and so did Bates and Anthony, but the guys figured it out sooner. We played dumb and didn't help them.

Anthony did end up telling Mona and Beth about the menu though.Max: Yeah. He totally didn't mean to and you could tell he was upset by that. The second he did it, you could totally see that he had made a mistake. Bates would've killed him had he been there to see that.

Bates was already going to kill him anyway.Max: [Laughs] Exactly! That was funny that it slipped. They had asked us and we were like, "I don't know. I think it's the soup. We just kept trying until it was right." We were just trying to create more chaos than anything else.

You guys were aloof and were considered the villains, and you freely admitted that you'd fake being nice to people in the premiere, but you wound up in an alliance with the hockey players and the singers. Do you consider yourselves villains?Max: No. I think it's hard to consider yourselves villains when you're in the back for half the Race! Everyone's just going to laugh at you. We never wanted to be in an alliance, but it was more of an anti-alliance. John and Jessica, Mona and Beth, and Joey and Meghan had made an alliance, and [the latter two teams] kept it up, especially last week when they thought they were on the first flight, so the rest of us just grouped together. We didn't really go out of our way to help Bates and Anthony or Caroline and Jen. We took their help if they were offering it and we didn't backstab them. Obviously you saw how those two really helped each other and told each other about every flight and stuff. We didn't mind being part of the group to help out, but we weren't invested as Caroline and Jen were.

Would you have U-Turned Bates and Anthony if you had the chance?Max: People ask us that all the time and we would've. Obviously they got there first and U-Turned Meghan and Joey, so it only made sense to U-Turn Mona and Beth. We wanted to buy some insurance. I honestly think we were all expecting to be U-Turned. It's a race — no personal feelings. But I don't think we were really villains. We were kind of loners, but I think we have self-awareness. Sometimes villain teams don't have self-awareness. We knew people's perceptions of us.

I loved your reaction to learning that John and Jessica didn't use their Express Pass and got eliminated.Max: [Laughs] I thought that I was just saying what all of America was going to say.

And that's what we were saying.Max: Yeah! That's how I felt. And Joey and Meghan were trying to defend them. I know everybody was thinking the same thing and maybe nobody had the balls to say it, but I was just like, "Holy crap! You've got to be kidding me. How is that possible?!" That episode was one of the most fun ones to watch because even Phil was just like, "Oy vey. I don't understand it." And [John] was just in complete denial. To this day, I still find it crazy.

Did you really think you were going to meet Obama?Max: When you open those clues, you believe most of the things you read. I would say within two minutes of reading that clue, I said to Katie, "Wow, if Bert [van Munster, the creator] pulled this off, he's really got some skills." Then I thought to myself, "We've really got problems as a country if the president's taking the time to meet reality show contestants not even knowing when they're all going to arrive." [Laughs] So we didn't buy it for very long, but it was certainly entertaining.

What's next for you guys?Max: Hopefully All-Stars! [Laughs] We have dreams about the Race every night now.

Is your recurring dream a recurring nightmare now? You turn the corner and you see Bates and Anthony run by you?Katie: [Laughs] Yeah! And we have recurring nightmares about the Tidal Basin and the suitcases, having it slip through our fingers.Max: It's hard just not to think about how close it could've been. Maybe we still would've lost, but you never know. Katie and I talk to fans of the show and we say, "You might hate us, but did you notice us?" The general consensus we got was, "We hated you. We didn't want you to win, but we did enjoy watching it." It was kind of like a trainwreck for them. [Laughs] That's our hope — to get another crack at it.